Meta will be able to crawl sites tied to business accounts
From Oct. 30, Meta's commercial terms let it crawl domains linked to an account and use them to train its products.
Meta's new Commercial Terms, the contract for those who use its tools to advertise or run a page, take effect on Oct. 30, 2026 and include a clause the current version lacks. By accepting them, the user lets Meta, or a third party working for it, sweep with automated programs the domains, web pages and URLs tied to their products or services.
The text adds that Meta may periodically pull updates from those sites. It may also use their content, among other purposes, to train and improve the features and products of the Meta group of companies. The terms apply to pages, ads and business tools on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
According to Nieman Lab, three legal experts it consulted understand the clause to reach almost any news outlet, since most run at least one Meta business account. Matt Topic, an attorney at Loevy & Loevy, called it "a remarkable provision to bury in the terms of service." He also said it is unclear whether a court would enforce it, but that publishers should assume it would.
Nieman Lab reports that the text does not provide a way to opt out: whoever keeps using the business tools after that date is bound by the new rules. According to that outlet, Meta replies that it is only consolidating existing terms and that its crawling does not change. This outlet could not open the full Nieman Lab text, so that company position is not confirmed in a statement from Meta itself.
Meta already runs crawlers such as Meta-ExternalAgent, which sites can block in their robots.txt file, according to PPC Land. The difference the lawyers point to is that this clause is a contractual authorization, accepted by using the products, and not a technical permission that each site grants or denies. Nieman Lab adds that the text does not explain how Meta would decide which sites are associated with an account.
It remains unanswered whether the clause applies the same way in Mexico, because the terms list a contracting entity per region that has not been reviewed. It is also unknown whether Meta will offer any opt-out before Oct. 30.
